I have a Digitakt, Digitone, and Analog Four MK II.
I would like to somehow connect them all to a midi keyboard so I can use this keyboard to play them.
Is there a way to set this up so I can easily switch and control which track on which box the midi keyboard is playing? So the midi keyboard is only controlling one track on one box at any one time.
How would I set this up? Midi keyboard as master, then into one box and midi thru to the next?
I recently bought an M-Audio Keystation 49, however now I realise it only has USB out out (not 5-pin DIN). Could I make this work using an iPad/interface and USB power station? It all seems quite complicated…
If you have an unused Raspberry Pi and a USB MIDI interface, use this set of scripts to turn it into a MIDI host.
Once you have the USB MIDI problem solved, set each Elektron to listen on a different MIDI channel. You can either use a MIDI Thru box or just daisy chain the elektrons. On your keyboard, select the channel that corresponds to the device you want to control.
it seems more complicated than it is, at first I couldn’t wrap my head around it, but if your intention is only to use the keyboard to play them chromatically you just chain them using 5 pin din with for example digitakt as the brain, 4 midi channels control DN, the other 4 assigned to A4 and instead of leaving external note control unchecked on DT - enable it, then plug your controller into DT midi in. You set up mute modes on DT and from there you’ll be selecting channels and controlling the transport, the keyboard will play whichever channel (midi or sampler) is selected on the brain.
If you want to use CC sent from a keyboard it will become a whole other headache. If you have not watched Eaves youtube video on chaining your devices check it out, it’s very helpful as a starting point.
If you already know how to chain the devices, then it’s just adding the keyboard controller, I plug in my keystep and it does what it’s supposed to as a chromatic keyboard.
There’s a few ways to do it.
The easiest is daisy chaining them using the Thru ports, and setting each channel you wish to play to a unique channel, then selecting that channel on your keyboard to play that track.
Another method is using the “Auto Channel” on each device.
Use a different channel for each elektron device.
Digitakt channel 10, Digitone channel 11, AF channel 12.
Now when you select one of those channels on your keyboard you can play the “Selected track”
So on the A4 if Trk 2 is selected, and channel 12 on your keyboard, you can play Trk 2.
If you select/focus to a different track on the a4 it will play that track from the same channel 12.
Another method is to get a midi router.
You can find an old cheap Midi Express XT and use the built in preset “live keyboards” to have everything connected.
So you’d hook up each device to Midi IN’s and Out’s.
Then you just set each track to the channel you wish to use from your keyboard.
No need for a computer and cost about $60 to get one.
With this method you can also do a lot of cross control from each elektron device as well as using your keyboard.
I really like the Blokas Midihub for this kind of thing. I’ve got mine setup so that it takes MIDI notes from my keyboard and dispatches them onto all the channels I need, then I’m using the eight buttons on a Faderfox UC4 to toggle off/on filters in the Midihub box that allow particular channel’s notes to pass through. It’s probably overkill for what you need but there’s a lot of other cool stuff that it can do so I generally recommend it if you’re often working with multiple boxes + controllers.
If your keyboard only has USB out you would probably need to route the MIDI through something like MIDI-OX on a computer and out into the Midihub where it would then do the routing. Maybe a more straightforward MIDI host device setup would be better in your case.
